


An Ache Like Longing

by jhoom



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Loneliness, M/M, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25042042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jhoom/pseuds/jhoom
Summary: The Winter Soldier has a hole inside him, one that feels an awful lot like loneliness.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	An Ache Like Longing

**Author's Note:**

> what's this? another short stucky fic filled with angst? why, i must be working through my [Bad Things Happen](https://badthingshappenbingo.tumblr.com/) bingo squares! here we've got: loneliness
> 
> no happy ending in this one, since it's set in canon at a point where there isn't a happy ending just yet. whoops :/
> 
> come bug me on tumblr [@jhoomwrites](http://jhoomwrites.tumblr.com) about stucky ~~or to poke at me about destiel which i swear i still write XD~~

It’s a fight he’s not going to win. 

Bucky learns this one day when he’s alone, aching from head to foot with god knows what crap being pumped into his veins via IV. This is one of the better days, one where he feels like shit but he’s alone, there’s no one actively torturing him and trying to shape him into something he doesn’t want to be. And even though it’s one of the good days, pathetic as it is, it’s actually one of the worst days. 

He escapes into the back of his mind, the only safe place he has left. He goes to Brooklyn, his youth. He almost smiles at the peace there, until he’s grimacing and about to cry.

Try as he might, he can’t remember what his mom looks like. Can’t remember his sister’s name. Doesn’t have all the words he used to for the memories in his head; doesn’t have all the memories for the words he has left. There are pieces of himself missing and he’s losing more every day. There’s nothing he can do, not now that they’re already in his head. 

Fuck. 

Not for the first time, he wishes he really had died when he fell. It’s too much even now to wish he’d been able to grab Steve’s hand. Already he feels tainted, not good enough, not worth saving. 

In a small act of rebellion, the only one left to him, he spends the quiet day alone gathering the memories he can. There’s not much left, so little it leaves him trembling and tears streaming down his face, but he takes each and every precious bit of it and packs it away. He takes a moment to admire each, to feel the bittersweet longing for a life lost to him, and then buries them deep. 

There’s some sick satisfaction in the task. If Bucky’s the one doing it, stripping away his own past, then it means Hydra can’t do it for him. They don’t get to claim that victory over him. They don’t get to be the ones to burn Steve Rogers out of his memory, not after the way those fuckers gleefully went on about his death in the Arctic. 

The man himself might be gone, lost to the ice and water, but a piece of him will stay hidden in the recesses of Bucky’s mind, a small memorial to that punk kid he grew up with and loved so fiercely despite everything. 

It’s not an easy thing, erasing Steve. It takes longer than he expects. He’s not sure why he thought it’d be a simple thing to tear down the love of his life. Hydra’s done the first bit for him, but there’s still  _ so much _ . The way Steve looks when he’s bone-tired, snoring lightly with the pre-dawn light making his hair glow. The way his tongue will poke out between his lips when he’s concentrating on a sketch. The tempo of his voice when he’s in the middle of a rant, self-righteous and indignant and beautiful. The filthy sounds he makes when Bucky’s mouth is on him and the happy sighs when he comes. 

All of it, Bucky has to cut away piece by piece until his mind is left barren and broken and that much easier for Hydra to fill. 

~ ~ ~

The Soldier works. He hunts and kills and steals, reports back to handlers who patch him up just to send him back out again. 

Or put him under. The Soldier doesn’t like that. 

In the empty spaces, the moments between the kill and before the cold takes him, those are the worst. In those spaces, he hurts. 

It is a strange hurt, one that the medics can’t fix in the rare moment when the Soldier reports them. An ache that starts at his temple and settles beneath his ribcage. It’s sharp despite its familiarity, an injury he can neither diagnose nor find much less heal. It hurts worse than when he’s shot or stabbed by enemies; worse than when he’s beaten or tased for disobeying. It hurts worse than when they wipe him again. 

What is the feeling? 

What is this agony that follows him like a shadow and haunts him like a ghost? 

It’s almost like a presence. Times when he expects a voice or a touch, when he feels someone following him despite knowing damn well there’s no one. There  _ should _ be someone, he  _ wants _ there to be someone, and this realization brings with it the truth of the pain. 

Loneliness, a pit of it that means to consume him. 

There’s a person he longs for with all his being and he doesn’t know who it is, doesn’t know if they’re even real or if it’s his treacherous mind inventing a weakness where he otherwise has none. Some days it’s a small man, brittle but fierce; other times it’s a larger man, stronger than steel and just as fierce, but sadder. Either way, he feels a deep sadness when he thinks of these men, men he craves by his side despite knowing the impossibility of it. 

The point of the matter is: there is a person, real or imagined, somewhere out there with the power to  _ ruin _ him. One word, one look, and the emptiness inside of him would sing. He’d let his guard down, and then he’d be dead, wouldn’t he? 

The Soldier can imagine no other outcome, no other possible conclusion. Caring for someone as intimately as he cares for this person, this embodiment of his lonely existence… it’s dangerous. To himself, obviously, but he’s expendable. One day it could cost him a mission, and then there’ll be hell to pay. 

If there were a way to burn this weakness out of him, this inconvenient desire for a nameless, shapeless man, he would. 

No matter how much of himself he’d have to burn with him to do it.

~ ~ ~

_ “Bucky?”  _

_ “I knew him…” _

They do their best to sear the words from his mind. Even as he tries not to scream, the soldier knows: it’s too late for any of this. The ache he’s carried with him as long as he can remember has a name, a face. 

The Soldier will follow that man to the ends of the earth to find a way to numb his pain. He’ll either kill him himself—a surefire way to remove the burden this man represents—or he’ll… he’ll… 

He doesn’t know what the other option is. He knows it exists, knows on some fundamental level that it might even be a better alternative than watching the life drain out of bright blue eyes, but he cannot fathom what else to do with a man marked as his mission. 

So he’ll kill him, as ordered, and hope his own loneliness dies with him. 

**Author's Note:**

> ~~somewhere deep in the soldier's subconscious, you've got bucky screaming "no!!! don't kill steve!!! if you want an alternative to killing him you could just fuck him!!! that would make you feel better ;)"~~


End file.
